Milwaukee Bucks forward Jabari Parker will miss the rest of the season with a torn anterior cruciate ligament, the team has announced. Parker, the No. 2 pick in this year’s NBA draft, was a favorite for this season’s Rookie of the Year award, ranking second among rookies with 12.3 points per game.

But besides the obvious loss to the Bucks, Parker’s injury is yet another blow to the 2014 draft class. Read More »

In a cosmically just world, Andrew Wiggins would have just ended up playing for the Raptors.

Associated Press

On the latest Sports Retort, the Journal’s Ben Cohen joins us to explain how the Cavaliers might have done better holding on to Andrew Wiggins and trading Kyrie Irving to Minnesota instead. Ben also tried to keep everyone from hyperventilating about Cleveland’s slow start with LeBron James back in town, and offers a novel theory on why that’s happening.

Plus: What if five SEC West football teams end up tied at season’s end? We go to great lengths to picture what the most important series of coin tosses in U.S. sports history might look like. We imagine what watching college football would have been like had it existed in the 1850s.

In 2010, it was widely accepted that the Cleveland Cavaliers had shooed LeBron James away by surrounding him with Uncle Cletus and the Jukebox Band, a group of ragtag contributors with barely any right to stand on the court with a multiple MVP. Four years later, James has returned to Cleveland but only signed a two-year contract—and though he’s pledged his dedication to sticking around, there’s still the extant fear that the Cavaliers could screw this up if they’re not smart about it.

You feel for Cleveland fans, who so clearly love their returning son. No franchise should have the experience of twice wasting the best player of his generation. Right now, that fear surrounds a historically unprecedented dilemma: Whether Cleveland should trade Andrew Wiggins, number one pick of the 2014 NBA Draft and player most referred to as “the next LeBron” since LeBron began his career, for Kevin Love, the Minnesota All-Star with superlative statistics and the world’s worst luck in teammates. Love has toiled with the Timberwolves for seasons without even sniffing a playoff berth, and reportedly has no interest in becoming the next Kevin Garnett, a superstar wasting his prime because his bosses can’t figure out what they’re doing. With his flowing style of play and ability to space the floor, it makes sense that James has reportedly talked to Love about taking his talents to the Forest City. But it also makes sense that the Cavs might want to keep a potential star, someone to play lockdown defense alongside James and mature under his gaze—assuming it doesn’t take longer than a few years, as James is all of a sudden a 30-year old man. It’s a dilemma that continues one of the long-running debates in sports: now or later? “It’s one of those deals where the Cavs couldn’t go wrong either way, but which way is right?” asks Sports on Earth’s Shaun Powell.

There are legitimate concerns on both ends. For one, Love might not be that great without having the ball on a bad team. He’s also a minus defender, protecting the paint with the attentiveness of a sleepy puppy—a problem since Cleveland’s big men already lack in that area. “Three-point shooting is all the rage now, but it won’t matter if the other team keeps getting layups on you,” Ricky O’Donnell writes for SB Nation. On the other hand, Wiggins just might not be that great. He can’t shoot, showed signs of apathy at Kansas, and does Cleveland want to bet its best chance to win a championship on the hopes that a 19-year old will figure it out in time?

One thing is more certain: Regardless of what happens, James has played this perfectly. “By not locking into a long-term deal, James will be in a position to reap his well-deserved share of those riches–while locking in before the next potential work stoppage in 2017,” Ken Berger writes for CBS Sports. “But the Love saga also illustrates another aspect of James’ leverage: With the perpetual threat of free agency on the horizon, he’ll have enormous influence on the roster that is assembled around him — from season to season, and even within those seasons.” That doesn’t mean his invisible hand in guiding this scenario is entirely altruistic. “He’s the best player in the world. Let him prove it,” writes Grantland’s Chuck Klosterman. “Enough of this pandering. No more roster additions. No more gaming the system to make things easier. This is the team. Play with this team.” Still, it could be a better team Read More »

The Journal provides pick-by-pick analysis of the 2014 NBA draft. Andrew Beaton and Ben Cohen offer commentary from Barclays Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., and ESPN has the draft broadcast.

7:26 pm (EDT)

Ben Cohen

On the day of most NBA drafts, it's hardly a secret which player will be taken with the No. 1 pick, no matter how many times the team with the No. 1 pick tries to act like it's a last-minute decision. That's basically the exact opposite of what's going on this year. Nobody knows who's going No. 1 overall. Nobody even knows which team will end up making the No. 1 pick. Welcome to the wildest NBA draft ever.

Or at least since last year's NBA draft. You remember last year's NBA draft. It was a magical time when an actual professional basketball team thought Anthony Bennett was the best player available. (OK, fine. Calling the Cavaliers a professional basketball team may be a stretch.) Here's how that worked out for Cleveland: Of the 60 players drafted, Bennett ranked 57th with -0.4 win shares this season. By that measure, there were 18 draft picks who actually contributed more to their teams by not playing a single minute in the NBA this season.

But it turns out there was still a reward for the Cavaliers: They have the No. 1 pick again. The conventional wisdom -- which Cleveland ignored last year -- has the Cavaliers taking either Jabari Parker or Andrew Wiggins. If they do that, it would mean we just went through an entire year of NBA draft hype, only to have two players that everyone thought would go No. 1 and No. 2 actually go No. 1 and No. 2.

Which means that almost certainly won't happen. It doesn't seem likely now that Cleveland would take anyone other than Parker and Wiggins. But what they could do is swap lottery picks with a team desperate to draft Parker or Wiggins. Or the injured 7-footer Joel Embiid. Or the Australian supernova Dante Exum. Or, if it's the San Antonio Spurs, some guy who nobody has ever heard of because he's actually a hypnotist who convinces Gregg Popovich to coach until he's 110 years old.

On the latest Sports Retort, some of us are especially excited by Kentucky’s win over Wichita State—but was it an upset? We have the requisite postmortems for Syracuse and Duke, including this question: Have the Blue Devils stumbled in recent years because they don’t have enough annoying players? And what does the weekend say about the future of Jabari Parker and Andrew Wiggins in the NBA, if anything?

With Iowa State reaching the Sweet 16, I present a fresh batch of Cyclone Memories. Ben Cohen joins us, perplexed by why people keep undervaluing top-seeded Virginia. We find no easy answers to the question of whether Stanford’s band is enjoyable or aggravating. Plus, we gear up for our annual halfhearted nod at the great sport of college hockey. Read More »

On the latest Sports Retort, Matthew Futterman joins us to discuss his New York Marathon experience, and whether, as a distance-running veteran, he’d consider trying a future race in a wacky costume. He also charts how much pain he expects to feel the rest of the week, how far he’d go to qualify for the Boston Marathon and whether ultramarathoners actually fall asleep while running.

Then Kevin Clark drops by to break down the NFL at its midpoint, do a postmortem on his Miami Hurricanes and speculate about how many future hall of famers there are on this year’s Orlando Magic. His number is significantly higher than one might guess. We do our weekly bit of Michigan football group therapy. Darren wonders why Biff’s all-encompassing sports almanac is so thin in “Back to the Future Part II.” I posit an ethical conundrum involving a Kansas wedding and Andrew Wiggins. And much more. Read More »

Because there’s video, and because the video depicts what it depicts, the story of Mike Rice’s loud, abusive, mostly unhappy and recently ended tenure as men’s basketball coach at Rutgers was never going to be a one-day story. That Rutgers unquestionably did the right thing on Wednesday morning in firing Rice did little to remove the sting and stink of what the video showed—Rice bullying his players in a way that looked to land somewhere north of tough coaching and somewhere south of felony assault. Given Rice’s performance as measured in terms of wins and losses over his three years at Rutgers, it seems likely that he was headed for the exit one way or another. But the shape and sound of all this ensured that this remains a subject of interest, even as Rice—and Rutgers basketball—are consigned once again to obscurity.

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The Daily Fix blog provides takes on the latest sports news. Features include The Count, a look at the most revealing sports stats, as well as regular live reports of major sports events. Go to the Journal’s sports page for up-to-date coverage on the latest in sports.

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About The Daily Fix

Jeremy Gordon is a freelance writer who lives in Chicago. He has written for TheAtlantic.com, MTV and Prefix and occasionally Tumbles and Tweets. The last time he cried was when Steve Bartman dropped the ball.

Jared Diamond writes about sports for The Wall Street Journal. He currently serves as a beat reporter covering the New York Mets and Major League Baseball.

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